Alaska To Siberia... By Rail?

SlushDot writes:This article describes an unbelievably ambitious project that would make the "the chunnel", the underwater tunnel connecting England and France, look like a high school science project. Russia wants to build a tunnel from Eastern Siberia to Western Alaska, right under the Bering Sea. At a projected cost of 1.7x10^12 Russian Rubles (That's 4x10^10 GBP or $6x10^10 USD), I'm not sure where Russia will get this money, but wouldn't it be fun to ultimately travel from Tierra del Fuego to Johannesburg by train?"

Comments

Attack plan...

[overlord2]

C'mon... it's just a quick way to start shipping their armored divisions over... ;-)

Never happen...

[cybercuzco]

Its a great plan, but it will never happen. There needs to be an economic reason to connect the two points of land. England needed to be connected to the rest of europe because it does alot of buesness in europe, and alot of tourists to europe fly into Heathrow airport in london, so you could make alot of money on cargo and passangers if you had a rail line and highway link that connected the two. Alaskas Main Export is Snow and Cold air. Its third most popular export is Oil. Siberias main exports are Cold and Ex Pollitical Prisoners. Third again is Oil. Alaska already has oil and cold, so does siberia. Nobody wants to live in either place, and we both have too many dissidents, most of whom read Slashdot. Find an economic reason to make a rail link, and itll happen, we have the technology, the $6 million dollars just isnt there.

Re:Never happen...

[SubtleNuance]

needs to be an economic reason to connect the two points of land

Yeah - I cant see any reason to have a train connecting North/Central/South America with Asia/Europe/Russia... not much value there eh. You could take a train from any where on the planet to anywhere else. Sounds like it has a small amount of value if you ask me..

the $6 million dollars just isnt there Lets just hope the other $59994000000 is...

Not a Chance in HELL!

[Black Art]

I don't ever see this getting off the ground (or under it).

I used to live in Alaska. I moved there just before the pipeline went in. I remember what *that* took. This is a much bigger project with some bigger obsticles.

First - They are going to have to deal with the environmentalists. That alone is going to be a big task. When the pipeline was built, the various pro-environment groups were not nearly as strong as today. Getting them to even remotely buy-off on this is going to be next to impossible, if not totally impossible.

Second- They are going to have to figure out a way to make this thing work in tempitures that range from 60 below zero f to +90f in the summer. The climate is not hospitable to things that have moving parts or that can get buried.

Third - Much of the land is covered in permafrost. In order to build anything on it that will last, you have to dig to bedrock and fill with some other material. (Permafrost melts into a mud/jello-like substance in the summer. Outside Fairbanks you can see roofs of sunken houses that were built on it by foolish settlers.)

Fourth - There is absolutly NO economic reason to build the thing in the first place. Who is going to use it? The population density in Alaska and Siberia is very close to empty. There are not many people there. For the amount of track you would have to lay for so few people, what is the point?

Fifth - Good luck trying to get the governments of the US, Russia and Canada to agree on any of the details. I expect the wrangling by them, as well as the unions and other people who would want a peice of this to eat up 60 billion just amongst themselves. And that is before any track is laid.

Just because you can do a thing, does not mean you should.

Re:Not a Chance in HELL!

[Black Art]

It does melt when you put something WARM over it. (Like a house or an earthmover.) Building on permafrost is a *BAD* idea. Park a big earthmover that has been running all day and see how long it takes to sink like a stone.

The top layer of permafrost does melt in the summer. (I have heard the whole area refered to as "permafrost", so i tend to use that usage.) I know. I have walked on it. (The top layer is covered by a thin and dense layer of vegitation. Kind of like walking on a carpet covering jello.)

My point was that the heat and weight of putting a rail system on that kind of ground is VERY expensive. You can't just build on top of it. They have tried that before in Alaska and it does not work. Either the road suffers from frost heaves and/or it buckles and sinks. The only way they can build on it in any stable fashion is to dig to bedrock and fill. They had to do it for the pipe, they do it for homes in Ancorage (where my parents live), and they have to do it for any other place where there is permafrost and they want to build.

No real choice there.

Re:Not a Chance in HELL!

[DrWiggy]

First - They are going to have to deal with the environmentalists. That alone is going to be a big task. When the pipeline was built, the various pro-environment groups were not nearly as strong as today. Getting them to even remotely buy-off on this is going to be next to impossible, if not totally impossible.

This is completely different - this is a tunnel. This is a project that like the Channel Tunnel will be "built" by boring out soft rock at a depth of several hundred feet below the sea bed. There is no enviromental reason why this project should not go ahead. In fact, most environmentalists would probably realise that if made into a passenger link it may actually be good for the environment rather than all the planes you Americans and Russians seem so fond of using.

Second- They are going to have to figure out a way to make this thing work in tempitures that range from 60 below zero f to +90f in the summer. The climate is not hospitable to things that have moving parts or that can get buried.

Again, doesn't matter. We're talking several hundred feet below here - to make it safe they're taking the tunnel in around 20 miles on each side so that it slowly emerges from the depths of the earth in a safe manner. Oh, and apart from the fact it will be quite warm down there anyway, I'm sure that the Russians will have thought about heating if required.

Third - Much of the land is covered in permafrost. In order to build anything on it that will last, you have to dig to bedrock and fill with some other material. (Permafrost melts into a mud/jello-like substance in the summer. Outside Fairbanks you can see roofs of sunken houses that were built on it by foolish settlers.)

Now I'm suspecting you're either a troll or a karma-whore. Read the article. It's a tunnel. That's right a TUNNEL. Go and get a dictionary and look up the word "tunnel". Now, read that point you've written one more time - do you still think it applies? No, because it's a TUNNEL. It's several hundred feet below ground. That's what tunnels are like... (the state of education today, eh?)

Fourth - There is absolutly NO economic reason to build the thing in the first place. Who is going to use it? The population density in Alaska and Siberia is very close to empty. There are not many people there. For the amount of track you would have to lay for so few people, what is the point?

Who said anything about people using it? It means that large amounts of US exports can be made to Asia and Russia far more cheaply than at present, and vice versa. There is a huge economic reason to build it for cargo, etc. You're being arrogant enough to think you and other will be allowed to ride on it...

Fifth - Good luck trying to get the governments of the US, Russia and Canada to agree on any of the details. I expect the wrangling by them, as well as the unions and other people who would want a peice of this to eat up 60 billion just amongst themselves. And that is before any track is laid.

This kind of happened with the Channel Tunnel, and even now the scheme owes a lot of money and the company has been on the ropes many a time. They'll learn from their lessons, I'm sure.

Oh, and to those people who were talking about the differences in rail gauges, this is perfectly normal. The standard British gauge was used for years after we built our railways and the engineers went flying all over the world to manage the construction of other country's railways. The original gauge was determined by the gauge of the wheels made by a particularly popular cart maker in Newcastle in the 1820's because the original idea was to put standard carts onto the tracks.

Anyway, the difference in gauge is easily solved - the UK and France have completely different gauges but there is some sophisticated technology in place on the Chunnel trains to take care of this, and I'm sure that the same engineers will be able to help out with this problem. In fact, I suspect the same engineers from the chunnel will be brought in to handle this project, given their experience.

Fantastic Idea!

[FFFish]

I mean, who *wouldn't* want to ride a train to Siberia?

Actually, thinking a bit more, it may be a good idea. Rail transport is surely cheaper than freighter. And there are a pile of Chinese folk just starting to get their shit together to become the biggest consumer market in the world. Might be nice to transport stuff to them cheaply.

On the other hand, I don't recall there being many rail lines from North America to South America, or a (productively working) rail line from Europe to India, the second-largest mass o' peeples. Or perhaps our media doesn't like reporting on it.

Except for the Aussies, the major landmasses would all be interconnected by road/rail. That'd be interesting. And what with global warming and all, maybe Siberia ain't such a bad spot to visit after all. :-)


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